Word came in baseball this week of two things I am very happy about, to the point that I am posting about it.
Firstly, that Dave Parker and Dick Allen were elected to the hall of fame. These two men are long overdue to be in Cooperstown. Parker was a great player with a sublime peak. His great downfall to those pesky writers was he may or may not have enjoyed cocaine a little too much. But hey, in the 1980s, it was the law to do cocaine once you made a certain amount of money and after all, he was the first player to make a million dollars in a year.
I hate to play the if/then game when it comes to the hall of fame, but if Jim Rice and Harold Baines are in Cooperstown, then there was zero reason to keep Parker out.
His pages in my book are also a fun way to see how my brain works in terms of organization. That first page has him all in a Pirates uni - where he began his career and made his biggest contributions as a player (Stargell was the leader but Parker was the most dangerous hitter). That makes sense. He then was traded to Cincy after the Pittsburgh drug trials, so maybe that next page would be all Reds cards, well not quite. You see mostly Reds but also cards that match cards on the other pages.
Parker did bounce around a lot at the end of his career, didn't he? Have bat, will travel. I am glad the veterans committee, or whatever they are calling it this week, came to their senses and immortalized a great player while he was still alive. The same cannot be said for poor Dick Allen.
He died in 2020 and he belonged in the hall way before that. His numbers are the perfect illustration of why you need to "normalize" for era. He did all his damage in the 60s and early 70s, when pitching dominated the league. He also committed the cardinal sin of being an outspoken black man in the 60s when all the writers were stuffy old white dudes and Philadelphia was not exactly into loving the brothers. So his family will get to enjoy his enshrinement but he will not. They did this more recently to Ron Santo as well, so I can't decide if this move is pulling a Santo or pulling an Allen. The opposite is waiting until a player dies because they don't deserve to reap the benefits of being a hall of fame member; this is now pulling a Rose but someday will probably be pulling a Bonds.
The second thing that happened is that the Mets backed up the dump truck full of money and unloaded it in the yard of Juan Soto.
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| Fun fact: the two world series MVPs in Mets history also wore #22 |
This signing is obviously a very expensive undertaking for my hometown team to partake in and it is also unique for them. The Mets usually make big trades for big players (Carter, Alomar, Piazza, Lindor) and then sign them to big deals but have never really signed the prime free agent for the right reasons. The only other time this happened was with the now infamous Bobby Bonilla and they did that as a knee jerk reaction to not signing Darryl Strawberry - when they should have either just given Straw the money or waited a year and paid Barry Bonds. And we all know how Bobby Bonilla turned out in Mets history. But here they have signed the "generational talent" (they passed on A-Rod) to the biggest contract (and outspending the Yankees to do it) and it actually has a chance to work out for a change, both as a player and his fit on the team. I am hopeful, but with the Mets, it is always tainted with caution.
